Sunday, April 21, 2013

The Comintern is the second installment in a series on the Soviet Union. In this episode we discussed alternate history scenarios set in the period of the Communist International, roughly the inter-war years and World War II. You can download the MP3 here or watch it through youtube by clicking the embedded video below.

In other news, life has been a little hectic. However, I should be resuming the normal posting schedule fairly soon. Cross your fingers.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

People love to compare the United States to Ancient Rome. The analogy is usually used to evoke concern about the direction of the United States, because if America is following in the footsteps of the Roman Republic overthrow of the Republic must be imminent. Right?

If you look at actual American history, the parallels to Rome become superficial, at best. But how could American history have tracked Roman history much more closely? That question I have attempted to explore below, keeping in mind that the exercise can only go so far before things stop making any sense.

The major struggle which informed most of the Republic's history could be termed a class struggle of sorts. First it was the patricians against the plebeians, and later the wealthy plebeians and remaining patricians (or optimates) against the masses. That interpretation of history echoes rather eerily the Marxist framework of class struggle. Patricians are nobles, wealthy plebeians are the bourgeoisie, and the masses are the proletariat. But how could a strong class system be imported to the thirteen colonies, which never had to contend with native nobility as European radicals in the 18th century did?

An easy solution to this problem involves the British parliament acquiescing to enough of the rebels' demands on the eve of the American Revolution. Perhaps a plan similar to the Albany Plan of Union originally proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1759 would have been implemented, wherein a continental parliament would be created to govern continental affairs, though still answerable to the Crown. A parliamentary system, in the long run, would likely lead to a unitary system of government, rather than the federalist system which constrained the national government's authority, another change to make America resemble Rome more clearly. For this reason I will from now on refer to this state as the American Republic, rather than the United States.

The American parliament, a unicameral body whose members are elected by all the male landowners in the country, would have appeared very enlightened to Europe at the time. There are no titles of nobility, no analogue to the patrician class. However, by encoding a class divide in government, without a constitution proclaiming all men to be equal (in theory), the social situation matches Roman rivalry between the optimates and populares. When the American Republic begins to industrialize, it will experience an even stronger struggle between industrialists and workers, or the bourgeoisie and proletariat as Karl Marx would say.

If one follows the Roman metaphor to the fullest, a socialist party analogue to the Gracchi brothers would be elected to power. Their redistributive policies would be popular with the masses, but prompt an industrialist coup. The socialists would make a come back a decade later, but this time an agenda including giving equal rights to people of color would have lost them the support of the white working class, causing them to lose power for a second time. From here on, all of the forces which mobilize the working classes would be ambitious men with their own agendas. To put it succinctly, in this timeline the industrialists win; workers protections continue to be minimal, at best, into the 20th century.

This pattern of social unrest more closely resembles that of the Roman Republic. However, to be a faithful shadow of ancient Rome, the American Republic will need to expand even more, territorially. Rome ruled a huge expanse of territory with a government best suited to governing a city-state. This allowed ambitious men to raise support in the provinces and bully the senate into implementing their agenda, which became a theme of the last century or so of the Republic. The American Republic is already starting out larger, possessing all of Canada. However, to really outgrow their government, the American Republic will have to expand more. The obvious target is Latin America, but the United States conquering all of Latin America raises some serious plausibility issues.

Below is a rough time line of events which I hope respects plausibility while still resembling Roman territorial expansion.

1773: Plan of Union is implemented, preventing the American Revolution and creating a continental parliament subject to the English crown.

1789: French Revolution begins. Events follow a broadly similar course to our time line. However, butterflies alter the continental wars to avoid a Peninsular War. This causes the United Kingdom to shift its strategy and conquer the Spanish New World, setting up a series of British protectorates it traded with as opposed to the continent, due in part to a more successful Continental System. Thus France and the United Kingdom are in a near perpetual state of war for a decade longer than our timeline.

1818: Fed up with having to continually contribute to a continental war, the American parliament rebels, instituting an American parliamentary Republic. The United Kingdom, occupied with European affairs, is unable to prevent them from succeeding, sending only a token force to stop them.

1836: Mexico, a British protectorate, and the American Republic go to war over conflicting claims in the Louisiana territory. The gruelling war catalyzes the creation of a professional American army. That army is successful; in the peace treaty America gains all of northern Mexico and installs a governor in what is now the American protectorate of Mexico.

I won't continue with specifics, but the idea is that Mexico anglicizes to an extant, allowing it to become a component of the American empire. The empire, spanning the entire continent of North America, is certainly large enough. The unitary system of government means that all provincial officials would owe their position to Philadelphia, the capital of the American Republic, rather than the province they govern. So when violent political struggles break out, whether they be driven by class conflict or simple ambition, Philadelphia will always play the central role that Rome did two millennia ago. Perhaps crossing the Appalachian mountains will be similar to crossing the Rubicon.

I hope you enjoyed this stab at what a more Roman America would look like. Please comment on what you liked and what you didn't like. I feel like this idea could use a time line of its own, so comment if you would be interested in reading that also.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Today we recorded the third episode of the Alternate History podcast. The topic was the Comintern, the period between the Russian Revolution and World War Two. One alternate history possibility posed during the discussion really got me thinking.

The Great Purge in the late 1930s was Stalin's way of dealing with his enemies, the vast majority of whom were innocent men who had the misfortune of being officers in the Russian military. However, one of those men was certainly at odds with Stalin. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Marshall of the Soviet Union, was a brilliant military mind, hindered only by Stalin's insidious micromanaging. He resented the Stalin for that, understandably so, though there is no evidence he ever sought to stage a coup as Stalin's paranoia feared.

But what if something about the Purge was altered, some slight event that tipped Tukhachevsky off before being captured. Just the right change to convince the "little Napoleon," as Stalin called him, that his only option to survive was to overthrow Stalin. If he had evidence of imminent purges he could certainly get the officer corps to support him, and with the army at his back Stalin would have been a dead man. What might the repercussions of Tukhachevsky instituting a military dictatorship in Soviet Russia in 1937 have been?

Such a change most obviously alters the entire complexion of World War Two. With the officer corp intact and without Stalin meddling in strategy and tactics from Moscow, the Red army will not be nearly as hamstrung against the Nazis as they were in our time line. I believe it is possible that after the initial thrust of Operation Barbarossa into Germany, most of the fighting would have taken place in Poland.

That assumes there is an Operation Barbarossa at all. 1937 leaves plenty of wiggle room for butterflies. Without the purges, the Soviet Union would most certainly have been a party to the Munch Conference of 1938, and as a strong supporter of Czechoslovakia, Tukhachevsky may have gone to war to prevent a Nazi takeover of the Sudetenland. With Germany much weaker and the Soviet Union much stronger at this time, I can certainly imagine Hitler delaying his invasions, for if he did he would most certainly have been destroyed. That obviously has massive butterflies.

If Czechoslovakia is still strong, independent, and supported by other powers, an invasion of Poland seems absolutely suicidal. However, Hitler, was nothing if not insane, and I could certainly imagine some attempt at invading either Czechoslovakia or Poland leading to a military coup in Germany. The possibilities from there seem limitless. The stand out difference from our time line, however, is that the horrific conflict that was World War Two would have ended much more quickly in this time by a stronger Soviet Union.

It is doubtful that a Tukhachevsky dictatorship would be all roses; dictatorships never are. But could his authoritarian regime really be worse than Stalin's? I cannot imagine so. I will refrain from speculating on how this change would effect things within the Soviet Union. All I can say is that I hope someone who knows more about the Soviet Union makes a time line based on this point of divergence.

* * *

Again, sorry about running behind schedule. After Easter I should be able to find a balance. The podcast which inspired this post will (hopefully) be edited and uploaded by Wednesday. If it isn't, feel free to call me out!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

One common alternate history question is "what if Columbus never discovered the Americas?" I am interested in a slightly different possibility; what if Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, but never returned to tell the tale? Say, for the sake of argument, that on the return voyage the Niña and Pinta are destroyed by a hurricane. How does this impact the Age of Exploration?

Unfortunately, I do not think the Native Americans would get more than a few years respite from contact with Europeans. In our timeline, a Portuguese fleet intending to sail off course drifted west to make landfall in Brazil. That voyage occurred independent of Columbus and there is no reason to think it would not serve as the first contact in this scenario. Now, what does that mean for future voyages and eventual European colonization?

Who explored what in our timeline was initially very random, and there is no reason to think there might be any sort of predictable pattern to the voyages of this alternate universe. One important early alteration, however, is the absence of a Treaty of Tordesillas, which effectively bottled up the Portuguese in Brazil to the benefit of the Spanish. In this scenario there is no reason to think the Aterni Regis, the 1481 Papal Bull which affirmed the Canary Islands as Spanish territory and granted all land south of them to Portugal. That means all the riches of Central and South America are nominal Portuguese, at least in the beginning.

How long the Portuguese could hold to such immense treasure is another question. In 1580, a Portuguese succession crisis resulted in the King of Spain seizing the Portuguese crown, effectively uniting the two lands. I suspect such an event would occur early, if possible, and that Spain would be more invested in holding onto the Portuguese crown for as long as it meant owning the riches of the Incans and Aztecs. Though the question must be asked, would there be Portuguese equivalents of conquistadors in this timeline?

I have to say no. Portuguese history during this time period shows much more interest in establishing trading outposts in foreign lands to trade with locals then in conquering large swathes of territory. Thus the Native Americans have gained valuable time, perhaps as much as century, to regroup from inevitable decimation by disease and mount a defense against whatever Europeans might try to steal their land.

Whether an analogous situation to Africa is possible, where the native people survive European colonization and eventually throw off the foreign masters, is debatable. It should certainly be possible in the more densely populated parts of Central and South America, though I am more skeptical that European land-grabs could be resisted in North America, particularly if that is Spain'smain theatre of operation early on. Speaking of Africa, the lack of an African slave trade that a stable native population would assume will have massive implications on West Africa's history.

I won't try and cover all of the butterflies in this one blog post. If you are interested in reading more, read this thread on alternatehistory.com, where I contributed to a collaborative timeline based on this very concept.

* * *

Sorry for the late update, life has been a little hectic. I can just about guarantee I will be off schedule this coming week, with Easter and all. But hopefully I'll be able to fall into a nice pattern at some point. And remember, if you like these articles, share them!

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Writing that headline just about made me physically ill. But I have been reading the tea leaves and, unfortunately, all the signs point to his coronation at the 2016 Republican Convention and victory over the Democratic candidate. Hopefully in 2016 I will look back at this post and laugh at how wrong I am, but for now let me explain why I say this.

The first thing you have to understand is that the Republican Party has a long trend of nominating the "heir-apparent," meaning whoever appears likely to win based on previous primary results. To show you what I mean I put together the below chart, showing the GOP Presidential nominee and "runner-up" (usually the second place finisher in the primaries) since 1952.

I started the list with Eisenhower because he represents a new beginning for the Republican Party after the FDR-Truman era. Eisenhower of course, was a war hero from World War Two who was courted by both parties before sweeping the nomination in 1960. His Vice President, Richard Nixon, would become the very first "heir-apparent" and would also define Republican Presidential politics for a decade and a half. As you can see on the list, there are three years after Eisenhower which do not follow the heir-apparent pattern and Richard Nixon is in a way responsible for all three anomalies.

After losing the general election to John F. Kennedy by a whisker in 1960, Richard Nixon took a break from Presidential politics. Because he was the heir apparent, the 1964 GOP presidential race was a messy affair, further complicated by the chilling effect the assassination of JFK had on the political sphere. Conservative heartthrob Barry Goldwater was eventually nominated, after fending off challenges from a number of candidates, including Nelson Rockefeller. Goldwater lost in a landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson. Nelson would appear one last time as Ford's Vice President after the Watergate scandal, though he declined to seek the nomination at the 1976 convention for either Vice President or President

1976 was another messy election for the Republican Party. Nixon had been forced to resign in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal, and Gerald Ford, who had been appointed Vice President a year earlier after the original Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was indicted for corruption, became President. In 1976 Ford ran for the nomination in hopes of being elected to his first full term. Ronald Reagan, the runner-up from 1976, who felt slighted by events as he normally would have been the heir apparent, launched a strong campaign against Ford, but at the convention Gerald Ford managed to clinch the nomination. Because Rockefeller refused to consider staying on as Ford's Vice President, Bob Dole was selected as Ford's running mate.

The next "open" election would not come for another 20 years. Reagan finally had his two terms, and then his Vice President George H.W. Bush clinched the nomination and presidency in 1988 after a brief scare from Bob Dole. When 1996 rolled around it was Bob Dole's turn. The man had waited twenty years and his seniority, combined with the popularity of Bill Clinton who was seeking a second term, prevented any Republicans of note from entering the fray. Pat Buchanan, a wingnut televangelist nobody took seriously, was technically the runner-up, but in 2000 the Republican Party had a clean slate of candidates to choose from. However, the heir-apparent cycle was never really broken as George W. Bush, son of a former president and establishment favorite, continued the line.

Now let us think about the last primary campaign. Romney, heir-apparent, lead the field consistently, challenged just about every month by a new "anti-Romney" who inevitably faded away. However, the last anti-Romney, Rick Santorum, had a little more staying power. After winning Iowa by a hair, he went on to carry ten more states, eleven in total, with a significant share of the popular vote. He meets all the criteria for being the heir-apparent laid out by Republican predecessors. Another oft-mention heir-apparent, Romney's running mate Paul Ryan, does not have the same credentials. No losing Vice Presidential nominee has ever gone on to win the Republican nomination, at least not without first being a runner-up in the traditional sense as did Bob Dole.

Does this mean Santorum's election is guaranteed? I hope not. The trend seems seems solid, but the sample size of ten meaningful elections (without an incumbent excluding the irregular 1976 primaries) seems a bit small. However, those ten elections are spread across sixty years of political history. To shake the heir-apparent system would require a major shift in the Republican Party. One could certainly argue that the Tea Party is just such a shift. 2012, the first primary season with the Tea Party, was uncharacteristically chaotic for a Republican coronation. Next cycle the "heir-apparent" will be a man who has been out of office for a decade, a particularly weak candidate. However, by now the Tea Party has essentially become the GOP establishment; I do not believe they will so critically assess a candidate which is essentially their own. So maybe 2016 will be the year the cycle ends, but I am not optimistic.

But that does not mean Santorum will be elected president, does it? Surely Hillary Clinton, or whoever the Democrats nominate, would give Santorum a sound thumping. Ah, but this is where a second trend I have identified comes into play. Look below at the list of Democratic nominees from 1960 until 2012 and notice the pattern. Bold means the nominee served as president.Red means the nominee was vice president in the previous administration. Normal text means the nominee never served as president nor as vice president.

It is a strong pattern, which surprised me as Democratic primaries are always thought of as very chaotic. They certainly are more so than Republican coronations, but there is still a definite trend. A nominee is elected president, then followed by his vice president, who loses. Then another guys loses. Then the next guy is elected president and the cycle continues. Right now we are at the end of the current Democratic president, which means, if the pattern is followed, Joe Biden will be the next Democratic nominee.

But what about Hillary, you ask? I'm not going to try and read all the tea leaves in this post, but I will note that Hillary has not given any real indication that she wants to run for president. And even if she does, she has been upset once. Why not twice? Is it really such a stretch to believe that the she could be beaten by the sitting Vice President?

But he's Joe Biden, you say! That's right, and that's one more reason I think the trend will hold and Santorum will be able to beat him. Is this analysis airtight? Hell no. But you are reading an alternate history blog. I hope this post was speculative enough to not annoy those of you who are here for history. I promise, the next post will be solid alternate history. Oh and don't forget, there will be a new podcast episode coming out soon...ish. Stay tuned!

Friday, March 15, 2013

Today the second episode of the alternate history podcast has finally been released. You can listen to us discuss the Russian revolutions of 1917 by clicking the embedded youtube video in this post, or download it directly by clicking here. My plan was to have it listed on iTunes right now, but it looks like I'm going to have trouble doing that so long as I'm stuck with access to one computer that only runs linux. So, unfortunately, effectively promoting this podcast is going to have to be put on hold. That means I really need your help! If you like this podcast, SHARE IT!

Now for some blog-specific news. I'm thinking about switching from posting every Wednesday and Saturday (as was my plan, though I haven't been consistent about it) to Tuesdays and Fridays. Saturdays as it turns out are dead days for blogger traffic, so maybe that will help to subtly promote this blog.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

What if Islam and Christianity switched places geographically, with Muslims in western Europe and Christians in the eastern Mediterranean region, what we today think of as the "Middle East." While this might seem far fetched at first glance, it is actually historically quite plausible.

Remember Christianity was founded in the east, in the Roman province of Judea. On the eve of the Arab invasions, the Roman Empire, which by the 7th century was mostly the eastern empire with a few holdings in Italy and Spain, sponsored what would become the Catholic church. The Germanic rulers of western Europe on the other hand predominantly followed the Arian heresy.

Next consider the Muslim invasions, events as transformative as they were unlikely. Arguably the only reason tribesmen from the backwater of Arabia managed to conquer most of the western world was the epic war which the two main powers of the time, the Roman (or "Byzantine") Empire and Sassanid Persia, fought from 602 through 628. That war thoroughly exhausted both sides in terms of money, infrastructure, and personnel, allowing the Arabs to sweep through both empires just a few years later.

Removing that Byzantine-Sassanid War is the key to meddling with the geographic placement of Christianity and Islam. So how can that be done? First, we must examine why the war happened in the first place. Up until 602, the emperors of Rome and Persia, Maurice and Khosrau II respectively, were on very good terms. Maurice had rescued Khrosau II from a rebellion a decade earlier, for which Khosrau owed him gratitude. So when Maurice was assassinated by his troops in the winter of 602 for ordering them to winter north of the Danube River, which meant exposing them to attack by invading Slavs and Avars, Khosrau did not hesitate to attack.

Let's say Maurice chose not to push his troops and allowed them to winter in friendly territory. Then for the next three decades, a state of relative peace is maintained between Rome and Persia. Maurice is succeeded by his son and co-emperor Theodosius and things are fine and dandy until the 630s, when, as in our timeline, the Muslims invade.

The Muslim armies were led by a strategical genius named Khalid ibn Al-Whalid. Al-Whalid, reading the different situation, likely would not have attempted to invade Rome and Persia simultaneously. I could come up with any number of justifications for invading Rome first, but to save time let us just assume he decides to head west first. Arab armies, not overstretched as one might argue they were in our timeline, still manage to defeat Roman forces which are more lively then in our timeline. The Levant and Syria fall in 637 and Egypt falls in 639.

But rather then rapidly expanding from this position, war with Rome and the effort of pacifying the newly conquered peoples is enough to keep the Muslims bottled up in this area. Attempts to invade Persia are beaten off by Khosrau and then his successor. But perhaps a decade later, the mass of Arab tribesmen, much more concentrated here than in our timeline, conquer North Africa. A few decades later they cross the Straights of Gibralter, conquering the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain, then storming across the Pyrenees to beat the Franks into submission before turning south to sack Rome itself.

All this might seem far fetched, but remember the resources which were expended in Persia are free in this timeline, those extra Arab tribesmen itching for their own land to rule. But I imagine sacking Rome would have been a step too far for our ambitious Arabs. Such a move would likely have sparked a revolt in their eastern territories of Syria, the Levant, and Egypt. With all of their armies in Western Europe, such a revolt would have been successful. Rather than returning to the fold of Constantinople the Copts of Egypt would likely have created their own kingdom. They had long been ostracized by Constantinople for following Miaphyisitism, a Christian sect deemed a heresy nearly 200 years prior to the Arab invasions.

With refugees from the east to bolster their armies in Western Europe, the Muslims certainly would have been able to hang onto Spain and Gaul along with North Africa. A full conquest of Italy also seems likely, as a Byzantium without Egypt would be in total crisis mode, struggling to feed Constantinople, much less regain loss territories to the West. So there you have it, Western Europe and western North Africa is eventually Islamicized. The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon Britain is in doubt, with missionaries coming only from Christian Ireland and the Brittons in the west. Whether Britain too would eventually become Muslim, or if the Anglo-Saxon Gods could hold on is anyone's guess.

In the East, Christianity reigns supreme in Egypt, in Anatolia, and in the Balkans, as well as in Ethiopia, which was the first country to convert to Christianity. The Arabian Peninsula is still a Muslim holdout, and likely to remain one, so long as the western Muslims continue the Hajj to Mecca and Medina. In Persia the state religion is still Zoroastrianism, though Manichaeism (a new religion drawing from Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Buddhism) could supplant Ahura Mazda.

* * *

So that is that. Sorry about the lapse in posting; I've been quite busy. Expect the next Alternate History Podcast sometime this week.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Yesterday was incredibly busy for me, which I why I didn't post anything, and today is not much better, so I'm just reposting something which original appeared on the Alternate History Weekly Update.

The importance of the presidential
election of 1844 is overlooked as often as the man who won it. James
K. Polk, an important yet largely forgotten president, oversaw the
fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, expanding the United States from
‘sea to shining sea.’ But what if he had been defeated by Henry
Clay, a man famous for his many compromises? Would the United States
still have gone to war with Mexico, the very conflict which
historically resulted in Mexico’s cession of California and the New
Mexico Territory?

President John Tyler had been
pushing for Texas Annexation since he took office after the death of
William Henry Harrison. Clay’s Whigs, who opposed the expansion of
slavery and hostilities with Mexico that Texas annexation implied,
defeated a treaty of annexation which Tyler had previously negotiated
with the Texas government in June of 1844. Determined for Texas to be
the feather in his cap, Tyler announced the formation of a third
party, the Democratic-Republicans, as a vehicle for his reelection.
In actuality his goal was to force the Democratic Party to nominate a
pro-annexation candidate rather than the favorite, Martin Van Buren.
The ploy worked and the hitherto unknown James K. Polk was nominated
instead.

Polk went on to win the elect by a
very narrow margin. Had Clay managed to win over five thousand more
voters in the state of New York, perhaps from the abolitionist
Liberty Party which was closely aligned with northern Whigs, he would
have won the Electoral College and become the nation’s 11th
President at a turning point in American history. Under President
Clay, no joint resolution for the annexation of Texas would have been
considered by Congress, which means no Mexican War (at least not this
early) and subsequently a halt to westward expansion. The
consequences of such a scenario are too numerous to explore
completely, but a number of interesting possibilities present
themselves when imagining President Henry Clay’s administration.

Map of North America when President
Clay assumes office in March 1845

Clay ran on a platform which
included his constant support of the American System, a threefold
plan which pushed for a strong central bank, high tariffs, and
internal improvements funded by the sale of federal lands in order to
promote commerce. In 1841, Clay championed an effort to charter a
Third Bank of the United States, to be called the Fiscal Bank of the
United States. President Jackson destroyed the second in 1836,
prompting the Panic of 1837 which led to widespread bank failures and
massive unemployment; the United States did not emerge from the
depression until 1843. President Tyler vetoed the 1841 bill, but a
Clay administration backed by a Whig congress and with the memory of
the recent depression still fresh on everyone’s mind should be able
to push through the Fiscal Bank of the United States in 1845.

The existence of a regulatory agency
would have prevented the subsequent Panics in the 19th and
early 20th century, assuming of course it were allowed to
remain in place for its chartered twenty years and renewed
consistently afterwards. In reality the issue of a central bank would
again be a central campaign issue in the decades to come. The
Jacksonian Democrats would not abide the existence of the thing their
progenitor had destroyed, an entity they viewed as unconstitutional
and felt threatened by. Thus, the narrative of the 1848 campaign may
have shifted away from Manifest Destiny and towards domestic policy.

Interestingly, the term “Manifest
Destiny” may not have been coined in this timeline. Newspaper
editor John L. Sullivan first used the phrase in an 1845 essay urging
President Polk to annex the entirety of the Oregon Territory. That
argument must be seen in the rhetoric of the time; expansionists
proclaimed “54’ 40 or Fight!” as Polk played hardball with
Britain over the Oregon boundary dispute. By contrast, President Clay
by nature would have been much more ready to compromise. He likely
would have used President Tyler’s original proposal, which placed
the border at the 49th parallel and ceded Britain the
island of Vancouver and navigation rights along the Columbia River.
Such an easy settlement would have allowed Clay to focus on
implementing the other two points of his American System.

In 1842, the Whigs pressured Tyler
into signing what became known as the Black Tariff, which raised
tariffs on imported goods to nearly 40%. However, Clay was not able
to push his program of federal land sales to fund internal
improvements through congress. Assuming as president he succeeded in
doing so, the northern states would have industrialized even quicker
due to more and better canals and roads linking the western Great
Lake states to Atlantic ports. Such a trend towards a more
industrialized North at an earlier time would only accelerate the
divergence between northern and southern interests while increasing
the North’s political clout at a faster pace.

A growing North would vocally have
supported Clay in opposition to the historical Walker Tariff of 1846,
which entailed immense reductions in the tariff rates. This policy of
continued high tariffs, coupled with a central bank unpopular among
farmers who profited on speculation and a system of internal
improvements which favored the industrialized North would seem to
lead to early sectionalism in American politics. Clay certainly would
have fared poorly in the south in 1848 and would need to carry most
of the North to win a second term.

The issue of slavery in the
territories would have reared its head earlier without expansion
below the 36’ 30 (Missouri’s southern boundary). In our timeline,
free Iowa and Wisconsin were admitted during what was Polk’s
presidency after the slave state of Texas joined the Union. Without
Texas, any attempt by territories in what was the Louisiana Purchase
to become states would be blocked by Southern legislators, unless a
new compromise could be made. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, may
have allowed slavery to spread farther into the northern territories,
but abolitionists were growing in strength politically during this
period and would certainly raise hell over such a compromise, if they
could not stop it themselves.

What is clear is that the two halves
of the ostensibly United States are moving farther apart in this
timeline much sooner than they actually did. A civil war in the 1850s
could take on an entirely new character. Whether it would be more or
less successful is difficult to ascertain; this point of divergence
gives wings to so many butterflies that a determined author could
produced any outcome he or she wants. Those butterflies run amok not
just within the shrunken United States, but across North American. I
hope to cover some of these possibilities in future installments.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

I have been involved in organizing a podcast over at alternatehistory.com, and our first episode was released today! I am joined by two members of the alternatehistory.com community in discussing the American Revolutionary war. You can listen to the podcast on Youtube by clicking the embedded video below, or download the MP3 directly here.

Expect the next podcast in two weeks. We will be discussing the Russian Revolution/Civil War. Stay tuned.

The consensus of historians on the
assassination of Grand Vizier Sokullu
Mehmed Pasha on October 11, 1579 AD (or 20 Sha'ban 987 AH in
the Islamic reckoning) is fairly well-known in our field. The Ottoman
Sultan Murad
III, alienated from the vizier who had served his father and
grandfather so long and ably by his mother Narbanu
Sultan and Venetian-born wife Safiye
Sultan, took steps to reduce the vizier's influence on
government. The vizier's allies were sent to faraway positions or
assassinated. Ultimately, a mentally-unstable dervish talked his way
into the vizier's office and stabbed him. This kind of intrigue was
fairly common in the Ottoman Empire, especially during the period
known as the Sultanate
of Women.

However, some recent discoveries by Miskatonic
University researchers of documents thought lost forever during the
civil unrest that wracked Constantinople when
the Janissaries were suppressed has shed new light on the
circumstances of the vizier's assassination and an incident that took
place in 1571.

These documents paint a far more sinister
picture of the vizier. They include accusations of dealings with
agents of Safavid
Persia, with whom the vizier had counseled peace as opposed to
the usual border wars, and even black magic. The documents accuse the
vizier of, under the influence of an agent of Persian Shah
Tahmasp I, acquiring a book of black magic from an Armenian
merchant who had visited the long-vacant shrine of a corrupted Sufi
order that had been destroyed by Turkish nomads not long before. The
use of this book resulted in an incident in Constantinople that
killed dozens of Ottoman soldiers, destroyed one war galley and
forced the scuttling of a second, and caused significant damage to
the Bayezit
II mosque.

These accusations against Sokullu are not new,
but have been long dismissed as the slanders from his political
enemies. However, the mosque was damaged somehow, necessitating
repairs by the famed Ottoman architect Mimar
Sinan in 1573 and 1574. Furthermore, it is often said that
converts make the best zealots. Safiye Sultan was a Catholic before
she became a Muslim, while the most recent evidence suggests Narbanu
was an Orthodox Greek from Corfu before her conversion. If Sokullu
was involved in the dark arts, or was widely believed so, this could
have provoked the ire of the Imperial women. They would not wish one
so tainted to continue virtually ruling the Ottoman Empire in place
of their son and husband. And the dervish orders might be willing to
provide an assassin to dispose of the vizier, especially given his
(tangential) connection to a Sufi order that had become warped by
dark forces.

Of course, this is all just speculation. The
documents describe how the soldiers killed in the incident were
buried in a mass grave outside Constantinople that was given special
attention by Muslim imams, Orthodox Christian priests, and even a
Jewish rabbi, while the materials used by Sokullu in the incident
were confiscated, burned, and abandoned in Persia. Should this mass
grave or the dumping site be found, it would lend credence to the
incident described in the documents.

So just why was the
Grand Vizier assassinated, and is the author's theory about dark
powers manifesting in Constantinople actually true? Read "The
Beast of the Bosporus" on
Amazon.com to
find out!

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Today I went down to Atlanta for day two of the AnachroCon, which bills itself as "the place in the Southern United States for Steampunk, History,
Alternate History, Science, Music, Classic Sci-Fi Literature and the
most amazing costuming you’ve ever seen!" I didn't read that tag line particularly carefully, so I stuck out like a sore thumb in my grey sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers against a crowd of steampunk enthusiasts. It seemed as if a section of 18th century London's well-to-do had time-travelled to a Marriott. Men sporting waist coats and top hats milled with women crammed into corsets and hoop skirts while a highlander in a kilt played a harp and sang.

I didn't see anything in the program about actual alternate history, though I expect the "alternate history" cross-pollinated with science fiction or fantasy which seems to sell better was in evidence somewhere. Actually, if you consider Steampunk merely a type of alternate history, and many do, that seemed to be a unifying theme of the convention. And more power to the people who like that genre or aesthetic or whatever you want to call Steampunk, but I have never been able to enjoy it the way I sink my teeth into more pure "historical what-ifs."

I suppose I did not stay long enough to get a really good feel for the convention. I did, however, get the chance to meet Matthew Quinn, a long time member of alternatehistory.com and author of the short-story Coil Gun. He's a great guy who gave me some pointers on both this blog and the Alternate History Podcast, the first episode of which will be out soon. So check out his stuff; he will be guest-blogging here and I may reciprocate on his blog which is also in the sidebar under the new "favorites" blog roll.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Who were the Hephthalites?
You might know them better as White Huns, distant cousins of the
tribe that wreaked havoc on the Roman Empire in the fifth century.
These Huns went south rather than east, invading Persia and India to
carve out a sizable land empire which they ruled from the headwaters
of the Indus River Valley. Rather than annex Persia outright, the
Hephthalites forced the Sassanids to pay tribute, and for two
decades, from their initial invasion in 483 to the beginning of the
sixth century, Persia was a pawn in the hands of the Hephthalite
king.

So why did these White
Huns not conquer Persia in reality? The honest answer is we don't
know. Information on the Hephthalites is sketchy at best, and so most
of this post will be simple speculation. It seems the decision not to
conquer Persia early on when they first invaded was a wise one, as it
gave them time to establish themselves in India. Had they simply
conquered Persia in 485, they likely would have been subsumed by
Persia similar to how many of the foreign tribes which invaded and
ruled China became Chinese. Looking forward a few decades presents an
interesting point of divergence, but before I get that, I should
probably briefly lay out the history of this time period.

In 483 the Hephthalites
invaded Persia and went on a two year rampage. The Sassanid Emperor
at the time was Peroz I, who was killed on the battlefield in 484.
His army died with him. In the ensuing power vacuum, his brother
Balash seized the throne. Balash paid the White Huns enormous tribute
to leave. His four year rule was marred by a power struggled with the
sons of Peroz. Zareh's rebellion was quashed with the aid of Armenia,
but Kavadh I would prove much more difficult. Kavadh had married a
daughter of the Hephthalite King, led a Hephthalite army into Persia
with his father-in-law's blessing. With the army outside the gates of
the capital, Balash was blinded and deposed by a group of priests and
nobles who opened the gates for Emperor Kavadh.

Once established, Kavadh looked for
a way to check the power of his magnates, those people who had
overthrown his predecessor. He decided to support a religious group
known as the Mazdaki sect, which advocated rich men divide their
wives and wealth with the poor. The magnates saw through his game and
imprisoned him in a tower in Susa. His brother, Djamasp, became
emperor and ruled briefly from 496-8. But Kavadh was able to escape
the tower and returned in 498 with 30,000 troops from the Hephthalite
King. His brother abdicated and Kavadh began his second reign as
Emperor of Persia. In that year he had to pay tribute to the
Hephthalites, probably in part for their assistance in placing him on
the throne. Kavadh could not pay and sought subsidies from Rome,
which not so long ago had been subsidized by Persia. Emperor
Anastasius refused, hoping the two eastern empires would turn on
themselves.

In our timeline, Kavadh managed to
forestall the payment of tribute by persuading his father-in-law to
support a war against wealthy Rome. But what Anastasius was right and
the two eastern empires did turn on themselves? It seems reasonable
to think that Kavadh's familial relationship to the Hephthalite king
was important in keeping the White Huns from riding into Persia to
collect the tribute themselves. But what if Kavadh was not in power?
What if when his magnates overthrew him in 496, they chose to execute
him?

Executing the son-in-law of Persia's
most powerful neighbor, the king to which they paid regular tribute,
would not have been a smart idea. The political misstep might have
been taken by the Hephthalites as a pretext for invasion in 497. I
highly doubt Djamasp, who seemed to have been a puppet of court
interests, could have held off the Hephthalite army. By 500 might the
White Huns have been in a position to annex Persia? I don't see why
not. Now they do not have a puppet to place on the throne, so the
Hephthalite king might have seen it as convenient to conquer Persia,
organize it as a province in his empire, and perhaps give it to one
of his sons to rule.

Organizing such a large empire will be
a significant challenge for the Hephthalites. At this time the
capital of the Empire was Baktra (Balkh) in modern northern
Afghanistan. This is fairly centrally located, though the western end
of the Sassanid Empire, where the capital of Ctesiphon is located is
quite far away. A system of regional capitals might be adopted. In
our timeline, Sakala (Sialkot) in the Indus River Valley became the
capital of the Hephthalite Empire. In this timeline in might serve as
a regional administrative center for the Indian province. Old Damghan
of Parthian fame could serve a similar purpose for Persia.

I am skeptical that this empire would
have any sort of longevity. If the king were to give his sons each a
province, the empire could quickly disintegrate at his death. Or
perhaps after each bloody succession crisis the empire would be
reunited. It's really impossible to conclusively decide one way or
the other, though it should be noted that large land empires,
especially this early in history, never lasted for long. Then in
about a century or so, the now sedentary Hephthalites will have to
deal with the Göktürks marauding
down from the steppes. Perhaps that would signal the end of the
empire, with Persians and Indians rebelling to form their own states.

But
let us look beyond Central Asia. How does this change effect the rest
of the world? The absence of a Roman-Sassanid war in the early sixth
century means the Roman (Byzantine, if you prefer) Empire begins the
sixth century in a much stronger position. I see no reason to make
significant changes until Justinian's reconquest of the west. In this
timeline the great general Belisarius would not have had any eastern
wars to cut his teeth on, unless of course Anastasius, Justin, or
Justinian decided to attack the Hephthalites. But if there was a long
period of peace, it is possible Belisarius might not have been the
general he was in our timeline. Then again, how can we say that this
economically stronger Roman empire would have had a tougher time
retaking the west. On the contrary, with more money and no western
distractions, I think the Italy and North Africa could not just be
retaken but held onto. And perhaps Spain also, which Rome already
controlled the coast of, and which had a natural border against the
Germanic Kingdoms with the Pyrenees.

Removing
the Sassanids also has a significant effect on the balance of power
in Arabia and east Africa. The
Persians controlled both sides of the Persian gulf directly and had
effectively vassalized the tribes in Yemen and Oman. They used those
tribes in proxy wars against the Kingdom of Aksum, Rome's Ethiopian
allies who had controlled the lucrative Red Sea trade for the
preceding three decades. In our timeline, the sixth century saw the
Sassanids wrest that trade route from the Aksumites, who were also
suffering due to the effects of climate change, overfarming, and
state collapse brought about by a number of factors contingent on the
loss of control of the Red Sea. If Persia's influence is removed from
Arabia then Aksum has a chance to take a breather and, perhaps,
regain its footing on the Arabian peninsula. This has huge
butterflies, the most notable being the shifting circumstances which
may impact the Arabic religious movements which Muhammad was a
product of.

I
have hardly scratched the surface with this POD, but I think this is
enough for now. Let me know in the comments what you think of my
ideas when it comes to the effects of White Huns in Persia.

Friday, February 15, 2013

The Alternate History Inquirer seeks to promote thoughtful discussion of "historical what-if" scenarios. The primary method will be periodical sketches of alternate scenarios, starting with a fixed POD and then moving forward in time to analyze the results of one small change in history. Hopefully members of the audience will engage with the blog, critiquing and speculating off of each post.

I am also interested in hosting podcasts on a regular basis with members of various alternate history communities to discuss not just specific scenarios but also general themes and tropes in the genre. I may also accept guest bloggers, if this blog ever gets to that level of success.